That's one of the problems in this country. Many young people don't pay in or when they do, it goes to some private insurance company CEO. Between me and my employers, we've paid in probably close to $100,000 since I started working full time, 10 years ago. I haven't used much in the way of health care because I'm young and healthy.... the rest of that money will never be used for my health care and most of it is probably in the pocket of a CEO.
That's one of the problems in this country. Many young people don't pay in or when they do, it goes to some private insurance company CEO. Between me and my employers, we've paid in probably close to $100,000 since I started working full time, 10 years ago. I haven't used much in the way of health care because I'm young and healthy.... the rest of that money will never be used for my health care and most of it is probably in the pocket of a CEO.
Well that didn't take long to refute.
So 36.8 million are US citizens. 9.2 million are not native or naturalized citizens. 12.9 million are young people (18-24). So it looks like MOST are not young nor illegal, though it's pretty close to a 50-50 split.
Oh and by the way, the number goes up when you look at those who spent a portion of '06-'07 without health coverage:
You pretty much backed up what I said, not refuted. 40+million is very much inflating the problem. Those chronically without insurance is a far lower number, at around 10M. THe CBO also has a study that those without insurance, about 50% have insurance again within 4 months(job changes).
Well, technically 46 million are uninsured, you just seem to have an excuse why we shouldn't care about the roughly 50% who are either young or don't have citizenship.
It is not that I dont care, but I do think the numbers need to be stated accurately. There are about 10M people in the US that are chronically uninsured. subtracting that from 45 million, gives you about 35 million who dont have insurance for some time during a given year and a significant portion of that is because of job changes.
Should the government pick up the tab for 10M illegals?
Should the govt pick up the tab for those that can afford it, but dont buy it?
To bring those uninsured numbers down, we need to get away from having health insurance tied to employment. People should carry their own health insurance, catastrophic at the very least. Catastrophic insurance is fairly inexpensive so this would make it a much better deal for younger people.
Jeff7
Lifer
- Jan 4, 2001
- 41,596
- 20
- 81
Government intervention is good in some cases. In a "pure free market" economy, there will eventually be those who rise to excessively powerful positions, and who will then exploit the rest of the market for their gain. And there will of course be those who place profit as the top priority, and the safety of the public is only addressed if it won't interfere with profit. Regulations are in place (in theory) to ensure that public safety comes first.
Call it "socialist" if you like - it simply need not carry with it the typical attitude of "Oh no, socialism is coming to torture your firstborn child to death!" Communist countries have their "Capitalism is coming to getcha!" bots, capitalist countries have their own "oh no socialism!" bots.
Fortunately I'll be insured now through my employer; not everyone has such a luxury, and a lot of employers have a long waiting period after your hire date before coverage begins.
Call it "socialist" if you like - it simply need not carry with it the typical attitude of "Oh no, socialism is coming to torture your firstborn child to death!" Communist countries have their "Capitalism is coming to getcha!" bots, capitalist countries have their own "oh no socialism!" bots.
Or college students who can afford housing, food, and tuition. I've been without health insurance for well over a year because even the student insurance was still goddamn expensive. My "health care plan" was the "Republican plan" that someone had in his sig here: Don't get sick.
Fortunately I'll be insured now through my employer; not everyone has such a luxury, and a lot of employers have a long waiting period after your hire date before coverage begins.
As I stated earlier, many young people do not get health insurance because of cost. They dont need full coverage health care, they only need bare bones coverage.
Not that small. While the needs of a pre-industrial revolution agrarian society did not need nearly the government - Thomas Jeffersons was the State Department early on - the real 'small federal government' was called The Articles of Confederation, and it did not work, and the 'bigger federal government' crowd won, and the US with a stronger federal government was created.
That's because you have a less than accurate history, perhaps. Anti-communism has existed since the word was created; the wealthy who rule the powerful nations indirectly have always had huge opposition to it or any system that weakens their oligarchy, with only minor nations getting to experiment more - and a few nations who had revolutions that were immediately under attack and became communist, basically, 'one bad system replaced by what becomes a dictatorship or at least a restrictive system'.
You really need to read more history that includes other sides to understand it. For a left-wing book that will make your head spin, try Michael Parenti's "Against Empire".
Did you know that the moment the Czar in Russia was ovethrown and the then-idealistic communists came to power, the western nations, following the interests of the wealthy who did not want any such challenge to their wealth and power spreading, invaded the newly formed USSR - including the US sending in the Marines? That triggered the government of the USSR going down a more controlling, militant road understanding it was greatly threatened.
Stalin was a monster - yet consider the way the US misrepresented the USSR to justify the cold war, waged by the US even to the point that the Stalin-hating Churchill felt the US was making a great mistake and creating unnecessary conflict. For example, the USSR wasn't about 'world domination'. In WWII, the USSR suffered so badly (from the fascist, corporatized Germany who had been close to the western powers) that it suffered 65% of the casualties in WWII, compared with 2% for the US; it wanted a 'protective buffer' of nations around it. As wrong as that might be to those 'buffer nations', the US was wrong to portray it as simply the first nations in their fanatical determination to conquer the entire world at any cost. The Soviets were happy to 'peacefully co-exist' if that were an option.
Instead, it became a contest mainly driven by the US, where we'd be trying to undermine them around the world - and some nations would turn to them for help and receive it.
And the Western powers had their own system of global colonization throughout the same period that was terrible for the third world, as well.
You had the US with major pressures, including top military leaders, wanting to use nuclear weapons aggressively against the communist nations. There was always pressure for a first strike in the US. WHile the US had nukes and the communists did not, there was a 'countdown' to when the USSR would get them with people saying the US had to annihilate them while it had a nuclear monopoly. You had the top US general in the battlefield, MacArthur wanting to nuke China with Truman having to relieve him (with the public strongly on MacArhur's side). President Kennedy and his Secretary of Defense were approached by the Joint Chiefs of Staff with plans advocating a first nuclear strike 'before the Soviets' got more nukes, while they might 'only' take out 'acceptable losses', in the millions, of the US population).
Consider the history of the US-USSR conflict that led the nation to the edge of nuclear war - and under most presidents, would have had one. While Kennedy was IMO the most peace-oriented president perhaps ever, the story still shows the US's militarism. Cuba was a nation the US had 'stolen' by starting a war with Spain at the turn of the century. It had done poorly in its allowing dictators such as Batista to rule the nation, and this rightly left the nation ripe for revolution (as Kennedy himself later said, "Those who make peaceful revolution impossible make violent revolution inevitable.") Unfortunately for Cuba, the revolutionary who they got was Castro - who announced his desire for good relations with the US, came to visit our President and was so badly rebuffed that the President refused to even see him - and instead, the US was already planning to invade and overthrow Castro, though the Eisenhower administration was unable to get the forces ready in time before leaving office, greatly disappointing Nixon who wanted the trophy for the 1960 election. The US was more than happy to overthrown this left-wing government like pretty much other it could, and Castro, with his small poor nation facing the world's greatest power, asked the USSR for help (and pretty much 'lost it', becoming hugely anti-US, to the point of wanting the US nuked even at the price of Cuba being nuked, which is one reason why the USSR saw him as nuts).
With all this, it wasn't as if Kruschev had placed missiles in Cuba for his master plan of global domination. Rather, the US, trying to surround the USSR with enemies as much as possible - the equivalent of the USSR putting puppets in charge of Mexico and Canada and arming them to the teeth - had placed nuclear missiles on the USSR border in Turkey. This was quite a threat in light of the US's talk about a first strike. It was when Kruschev saw a comment by JFK, who was dealing with the Joint Chiefs, say that we had to look at some scenarios in which a first strike could be our policy, as the US was focused on the retaliatory capability of the USSR on first strike policy where the strong the USSR's ability to respond, the less a first strike was feasible, that Kruschev felt he needed some additional deterrent against a first strike and put missiles in Cuba to counter the missiles in Turkey.
The US basically publicly said it would choose nuclear war before it allowed ay parity, with either both sides having missiles or neither; though privately, it did allow for both sets to be removed on the condition that the USSR keep the deal a secret so it appeared to the world the US had gotten its way, a hell of a line to draw for going to nuclear war, but a better one than the military and CIA and most advisors wanted, which was simply an immediate invasion of Cuba - which would have happened to result in nuclear war, because the Soviet forces in Cuba had, unknown to US leaders, operational tactical nukes and the authorization to use them against an invasion.
Again and again you can see left-wing governments attacked, overthrown, undermined, assassinated, blockaded - not for wrongs but simply for 'threatening to set an example' where the very wealthy are not as dominating a presence, nations from democratic Iran (1953), to Chile (~1970), to the major threat to our national security of Grenada (Reagan) to Venezuela (2002, in the rare coup that was reversed by popular opposition), for just a few examples.
Anyway, what you said you didn't understand was why such an anti-communist public supported national programs.
Here's why, largely, IMO: because the 'conflict' of the cold war has been a lot lss about things like national programs to serve the public than about simple national interests; and because the tyranny of the USSR has nothing to do with the democratic governments serving the interests of their people with programs.
Think about the experiences of the people in the 50's. Theyd been governed the last 20 years by Democrats, who had responded to the failures of the 'private system' which had led to the national trauma of the Great Depression, by showing the government was the servant of the people - whether it was in creating regulatory agencies to stop the Wall Street abuses (which it did pretty successfully from the New Deal until 50 years later when they started being reversed around when Reagan took office); or in labor, where the government had led the way from the terrible system of long hours in unsafe conditions, earlier even with child labor, for very low wages, to the explosion of the middle class (for whites, anyway), with a large percent of American workers unionized and 'the American Dream' more in reach than before the government did so, to the government providing power with efforts such as the Tennessee Valley Authority, to the government solving elder poverty with the social security program and many healthcare needs with Medicare to the government leading to victory in WWII, to the fact that the massive government spending in WWII led to economic *recovery*, not to the destruction of the economy as today's right would predict.
In an era before the distrust of Watergate and CIA abuses and more, the people looked to the government for solving societal problems more than you might think.
Why *wouldn't* the people want the government solving problems? Their anti-communicm was against the tyranny of the USSR - the elimination of the private sector, the *political* domination of the government corruptly silencing any opposition with executions and gulags and the lack of a free press replaced by state propaganda; they were opposed to what they were told was the agenda of the communists to rule te world under tyranny. They were not opposed to communists because of Social Security and Medicare.
At the time you talk of - the 1950's - you were just after the first president who wanted to create universal healthcare cold warrior Harry Truman, and just before the president, Kennedy, who ran on the platform of greatly expanding Medicare (against which the private medical industry began the political career of actor Ronald Reagan as the national spokesman against Medicare).
Why do you think the US is the *only advanced nation in the world* without a form of universal healthcare - because UHC is a radical commie nutty bad idea?
What you and may on the right ignore is that the founding fathers WANTED and INTENDED for the constitution and the nation to evolve with changing times - we're no longer in a situation where one man can be the State Department (or unfortunately where Jefferson's warnings that having any standing military is a huge threat to our democracy van be heeded - right? Or are you willing to stick with that founding principle too?) Government programs for people are not against our nation's values - they're at the center of them.
You can't just look at the exact programs to compare them, when the world's economy has changed greatly. Our nation has greatly benefited and prospered from programs.
I'm not denying big problems with misguided spending, but I am defending a lot of good spending.
And when they thoroougly corrupt the government to representing them befor ethe people, and their power grows to dwarf and threaten the public interest.
If you haven't watched or read "The Corporation", I suggest you do.
The height of the free-market laissez-faire policies in our nation saw some results we can look at. In 1900 - following those policies and just before the progressive reform era - the average wage in the US adjusted for inflation was $10,000. You had massive widespread poverty. You had many workers living in company shanties with barely enough to eat, no medical care children and parent often working in factories for 12 to 16 hour days without much safety, disposable. You had little education, very few (I'd guess 1%or fewer as many as today) in higher education because while an educated public is economically helpful, corporations on their own don't spend budgets on that, it was the government that taxed and spent for that. You had a massive concentration of wealth that guaranteed little opportunity for most - a nation of serfs. That's what laissez-faire brings, as it has throughout human history, the societal structure of a few wealthy and powerful over serfs.
I'm guessing you haven't studied Keynesian economics much and the history of policies to see how well they work. That would help in understanding why government spending can sometimes be good. The head of the committee trying to oversee the TARP spending, a Harvard economist, has been appearing publicly to point out how the government being more involved in market regulation - not laissez-faire - led to fifty years of relative market stability; the peak of government regulation had the most stable, healty economy, while the hundreds of years preceding and the last 25 years of deregulation folllowing the regulation have had massive problems under relatively laiissez-faire - the more laissez0faire, the bigger the problems.
Which of course isn't to say there isn't a happy medium, perhaps around where FDR and JFK set it - too much government role is greatly harmful as well.
You want to tweak the system, not have big changes. I'd suggest you get informed about the real pros and cons of different options, and not simply prefer one solution the way people tend to join the same religion they're born into; in the case of the economic issues, assuming it's the best, oblivious to the fact that they're being massively propagandized to have that view.
I'm not tossing around the word propagandized lightly. Besides the natural tendencies for people to stick with the familiar, our nation hasn't turned around on a dime on its ideology.
Decades of problems gradually led to the liberalization that occured under FDR and continued for decades. Under Nixon, one turning point was when Lewis Powell, advisor to Nixon and later Supreme Court Justice, wrote a memo saying that for those decades, conservatives had lost the arguments in the public realm, because liberals always had the moral upper hand - arguing for people's well being, health, against poverty, for the environment, and so on. He argued that the right would have to find counter arguments.
His recommendations helped lead to some very wealthy right-wingers spending millions to create the right-wing propaganda organizations, think tanks, whose purpose was to take conservative policies the public didn't like and to create message for them that would sell them to the public. Between that and the later media changes, including right-wing talk radio and the Presidency of advocate Ronald Reagan, the public shifted, persuaded, and the nation took a big right turn, gradually, ending much of the liberal FDR-Carter period.
Ask a typical citizen and they'll say they're not aware of any of this propgangda machinery - but if you will read David Brock's 'Right-Wing Noise Machine' book, you will learn of it.
The question is less the one you ask about why the anti-communist public would want big programs that serve their needs, than why the public turned its back on the programs they'd been happy with doing so and now are frequently followers of a right-wing ideology. It's not because the programs didn't work, as the ideology would say.
But I will say that it's not a coincidence that the right-wing ideology has paralleled the huge increase of wealth for the most wealthy as the country has reversed middle-class gains.
And sadly, our 'public debate' is filled with nonsense. The issue is even less the right-wing ideology's being spread, than the prevention of informed, rational discussion of policy.
This is reflected in the assumptions in your questions that you don't even notice, about how almost by definifiton the government programs are evil communist waste.
With those assumptions in place, it's going to be hard for you to reach a point of siding with the liberal views on much.
But look at the results of the era of Reagan-Bush 43 - the wealth transfer to the few most wealthy, the loss of American industry, the increasing debt, the breaking of the economy that fueled the programs for the people's needs. The issue isn't going to be whether it's better to pay for needs with private or public programs, it's simply going to be that so many people cannot afford those needs private or public - a slide back towards the serf state - while not as far given our advances in technology and politics, still quite a ways.
Why outsource so much of our economy? Because it increases short-term profits. How do you deal with the economic reductions from the people's reduced incomes? You borrow.
And how do you deal with the long-term bankruptcy of the nation from that borrowing? The American people are sacrificed to the global economy, allowed to sink. The less money most Americans have, the more affordable the assets of the nation are to be owned by the most wealthy, the more secure their handle on the controlling power of the nation.
I'd encourage you to read diverse things - the books I recommended above are an outstanding resource, but if you want something easier to chew, chck the free and short articles from many authors at www.commondreams.org - the best progressive commentators I know of are published there on a daily basis. It's liberating for you to learn more about the assumptions we often are unaware we've adopted, by seeing other views.
An analogy for you ponder: a bull can physically kill the matador - but the matador is able to point the bull's might harmlessly into a cloth. Do you think there might be some similarity there to how your outrage might be directed towards harmless fluff by certain media, away from where your interests are as the wealth of our nation is concentrated with those who already are at the top?
Nemesis 1
Lifer
- Dec 30, 2006
- 11,366
- 2
- 0
I read threw these . I won't debate this stuff any more. Because the one thing that can work . Can't work because of the nature of man . So the only choice is choice.
I don't know how this happened in america. Since this for me isn't a debate,but more of a statement.
I am not even real sure I can draw a conclusion from what I am ready without knowing these facts first.
Age of posters
Income of posters
Race of poster
Country of poster .
If I believed the percetage in favor of socialist state was majority or even a a sample of whats in this post .
There will be blood running in our streets. My types will lose. But we will lose free men . I won't fight. But won't conform either so that bad for me. Even tho my types lose . Were the Hard workers the innovators . NICE moves idiots whos going to carry your lazy asses now.
If your going to socialize medican do it right . THE state runs the system NO big doctor fees no outrages bed cost for horseshit service. NO charge , NI insurances . Medicial people have to suck it up . Or they will eat bullets
I don't know how this happened in america. Since this for me isn't a debate,but more of a statement.
I am not even real sure I can draw a conclusion from what I am ready without knowing these facts first.
Age of posters
Income of posters
Race of poster
Country of poster .
If I believed the percetage in favor of socialist state was majority or even a a sample of whats in this post .
There will be blood running in our streets. My types will lose. But we will lose free men . I won't fight. But won't conform either so that bad for me. Even tho my types lose . Were the Hard workers the innovators . NICE moves idiots whos going to carry your lazy asses now.
If your going to socialize medican do it right . THE state runs the system NO big doctor fees no outrages bed cost for horseshit service. NO charge , NI insurances . Medicial people have to suck it up . Or they will eat bullets
Fingolfin269
Lifer
- Feb 28, 2003
- 17,948
- 34
- 91
I'll play. What's the plan then? I've been waiting quite awhile for specifics. Thus far it has been a lot of idea pandering along the lines of 'think of the sick people lying dead in the gutters! With universal health insurance this will no longer happen!!!' yet I never see a plan thrown out there. Just three letters. U - H - C.
How long until we can officially be declared a socialism-oriented republic
==================
I don't know for sure but I do know that all the boogie men under by bed are trying to unionize.
==================
I don't know for sure but I do know that all the boogie men under by bed are trying to unionize.
yup.
They're coming to take you a-way. Ha-ha. Ho-ho. Hee-hee.
Yah got any dreams? They want them, too.
I don't think your numbers add up. I'd be generous to say it's a 50-50 split, which means about 23 million are either young or possible illegals. But what about the remaining 23 million? And as someone else pointed out, we're already picking up the tab for anyone without insurance who goes in for treatment. What? You don't believe uninsured emergency room visits don't trickle down to the rest of us? You'd be delusional to think so.
And another significant chunk are people who need it and are refused access to it. We could play this game all day.
Good, productive American's don't need healthcare.
Get cancer? It's off to the Soylent Green factory.
The point is there are only about 10M that are chronically unisured.
I will agree we are paying for everyones health care one way or another right now, but it is also delusional to make the problem sound far worse than it is.
It seems that the numbers were being doubted and that it was closer to ~23 Million by the above posts.
Yes, but the chonicly uninsured still remains at about 10M. Factor in that about 50% of the people stay uninsured for about 4 months, that numbers gets wittled down even more. Full employment is considered to be around 5%. When you talk of work force of around 180m people and insurance is tied to that, there are going to be some big temporary numbers involved.
ahenkel
Diamond Member
- Jan 11, 2009
- 5,357
- 3
- 81
I've always liked this article it just makes sense.
http://cthealth.server101.com/..._conservative_case.htm
http://cthealth.server101.com/..._conservative_case.htm
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